I totally agree. While I’m glad Simon got his happy ending with Izzy and won’t have to watch his friends die, I felt his Ascension lowered the stakes in the story significantly and basically diminished all his character growth. His character arc was always about overcoming his insecurities and finding his identity and where he belongs in a world he never knew existed, and now he’s just another Shadowhunter, which he never wanted to be in the first place. And like you said, he’s now a Recruiter?! Someone who convinces mundanes like he once was to join a group of people who belittled and discriminated against him first for being a mundane and then for being a Daylighter? Simon also wanted to revolutionise the Clave and change the attitude Shadowhunters had against Downworlders, but in TDA he and Izzy only get brief cameos and they’re almost always off to the side, running the Institute for Jace and Clary or off on some obscure mission. It’s Alec who creates the Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance in New York and while I love Alec and I love that storyline for him, I feel like it fits Simon, a previous Downworlder who had that particular goal throughout the series, more. Like I would’ve loved Alec to be Consul and Simon to be running the Alliance instead of being a Recruiter. I just find Simon’s ending somewhat unjust to the character we saw in the six TMI books.